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Television: AA Gill: Why David is bigger than the beetles

I’ve just seen a preview of the penguin film that’s taking America by storm, or rather blizzard. As I came out of the viewing theatre, I offered up a small prayer of thanks for the life and work of David Attenborough. Morgan Freeman, who provides the commentary for the penguin film, may be the voice of God, but Attenborough is God. He has created the world in five series, and now, seeing they are good, he’s going to have a rest.

The Life on Earth collection is nature’s greatest hits, a compilation album of fur, feather, fin and slime. The last, Life in the Undergrowth (Wednesday, BBC1), shows us the frantic existence of invertebrates. The bugs follow the awe-inspiring, miraculously complex dance of life behind the avuncular electric pied piper. Attenborough doesn’t pretend that there isn’t an element of anthropomorphism in his view of nature. We can only see through